Audit of Business: Overview of Current Standards in the Focus of ESG- Regulation

Abstract

The article provides an overview using certain provisions of the current auditing standards and quality management system standards for the purposes of confirming sustainability reporting. A comparison of Russian practice in the field of regulation of assurance of public reports of companies and European regulations obliging auditors to confirm the reliability of non-financial statements with the possibility of expressing a reasonable degree of confidence is given. On the basis of the analysis carried out, directions for improving the regulatory regulation of the procedure for confirming the reliability of non-financial reporting are proposed: regulation of the process of interaction between the auditor and other verifiers of non-financial reporting; introduction of a requirement for the mandatory audit of non-financial (and all corporate) reporting, which actually means a transition from the audit of financial statements to the audit of business. An approach has been formulated to define the concept of "corporate reporting" as a new object of audit.